Then came October. The air turned crisp, and the atmosphere in the house shifted overnight. On , a day that would forever be known as Black Monday , the stock market plummeted. Leo watched his father sit in the living room, the flickering light of the evening news reflecting off his glasses as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell over 500 points in a single day.
His father, a weary analyst at , had been coming home later than usual. The bull market that had defined the last five years was reaching a fever pitch, with the Dow hitting record highs. But in the quiet moments between the clicks of Leo’s mouse, there was a sense of unease. Then came October
The year is 1987. In a small town, the air is thick with the scent of hairspray and the distant sound of Rick Astley on the radio. Seventeen-year-old Leo sat in his bedroom, the walls covered in posters of The Lost Boys and The Running Man . He was meticulously trying to master on his Apple Macintosh, a task that felt like magic in an era of physical drafting tables. Leo watched his father sit in the living